


Deliberate Casualty

by Pureblood_Muggle, SAYS



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 11:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17202749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pureblood_Muggle/pseuds/Pureblood_Muggle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SAYS/pseuds/SAYS
Summary: For Courtney - The first thing Remus noticed as he came to, were the smells. Damp. Rotting wood. Earth. Death.





	Deliberate Casualty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pronunciation_Hermy_One](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pronunciation_Hermy_One/gifts).



> Darling, what can I say? Happy Christmas! Happy Birthday! For you, I’ve gone places I never thought I would! I’m honoured to have written this for you and I sincerely hope you will enjoy it. Love you!

Remus was in a relatively good mood. For what it was worth, he wasn’t feeling all that awful anymore. A minor miracle on the day after a full moon. 

As usual, the day had begun with Madame Pomfrey picking him up at the Shrieking Shack and healing the lesser wounds he’d inflicted on himself during the night. She’d ushered him across the grounds to the hospital wing where he took a sleeping draught and rested for most of the day.

By late afternoon, thanks to a huge lump of chocolate fudge he was sure had been left for him by his friends, he had begun to feel almost human again. Almost. He also almost managed to tell himself that last night had not been a nightmare. The fact that his friends had spent the majority of the night with him, transformed into their Animagus forms, had once again made his ordeal a little more bearable. 

They’ve been doing it for nearly a whole two years now – since they’d figured out how in their 5th Year. Still, Remus warned them every month not to do it. It was dangerous, not to mention all shades of illegal as unregistered Animagi. Expulsion from Hogwarts was the least of their problems should they ever be found out.

Remus popped the last bit of fudge into his mouth and stood up from the hospital bed he’d sat down on to put on his shoes. Taking a deep breath he stretched carefully to ease the sore muscles and was gratified when he managed not to cry out with the pain of it. If Madame Pomfrey had any inkling that he was still this sore she’d not consent to his leaving yet. It was hard enough still, after all these months and years at Hogwarts, to find excuses to tell other students that he didn’t want to stay out of classes longer than absolutely necessary. 

He hollered as cheery a ‘good-bye’ as he could manage in the hospital warden’s direction and fairly sauntered out of the large wooden doors.

Once out in the corridor, he made sure he was alone before allowing himself to briefly slump against the wall. Just a little breather before he began the cursed trek up to the seventh-floor corridor that featured the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. 

He sighed audibly and pushed away from the wall. The hair on his arms suddenly stood up on end as did the hair on the back of his neck. Automatically he reached for his wand hidden in an inside pocket of his robes. He looked around but there wasn’t anyone near him. The corridor was empty. 

As he made his way along corridors and staircases he cursed the fact that Hogwarts didn’t have lifts. His tired bones could’ve done with one. He felt eighty-seven not seventeen.   
The uneasy feeling of being followed did not leave him and he wondered if it was James and Sirius’ idea of a prank though truly he didn’t think they’d do that to him on the day after a full moon.

He’d slept most of the day but what he looked forward to most now was his comfortable bed in the dormitory he shared with his best friends. He was nearly back now so he stored his wand away and turned the last corner.

**

The first thing Remus noticed as he came to, were the smells. Damp. Rotting wood. Earth. Death.

He had no idea what happened or where he was. There was absolute darkness around him. He was flat on his back and his head pounded. He tried to raise a hand to his forehead to massage the stabbing pain. When he lifted his arm, however, he flinched as the back of his hand and wrist made sharp contact with a hard plank of wood not far above him. A sudden bolt of fear shot through him. Carefully, he tried raising his arms again only to be stopped again by wood. He began feeling around him as much as the space allowed but found he was well and truly trapped in a tiny space. His heart was now racing and his breathing became more unsteady with every breath when his brain finally caught up with what his body signalled: He was in a coffin.

He wasn’t sure how he knew it was a coffin but the thought manifested itself in his mind and wouldn’t stop. A coffin. I’m going to die. I can’t move. I’m going to die. I can’t move. Can’t move. Can’t move!

Remus tried to even out his breath, aware that the mounting panic wouldn’t help him in the least. The sheer panic in him though, fuelled by the claustrophobia he’d developed as a child, sent him into a panic he couldn’t control very well. His lungs refused to let air in, his chest threatened to squeeze the life right out of him. His arms and legs were now moving uncontrollably against the confines and his breathing turned into hyperventilating gasps as the first dull ‘thuds’ registered.

The dull thuds came more regularly now. He wanted to scream out but his throat had closed up and a sob got stuck in him instead. Tears ran unbidden out of the sides of his eyes though he wasn’t really aware he was crying. 

He wanted to kick the lid off yet he could barely lift his knee. Couldn’t bend his leg. Couldn’t move at all.

The panic rose to unrivalled levels in him. Images swam in his head, images he’d long since tried his best to forget, to black out from his memory. Images he’d once asked Albus Dumbledore in vain to permanently remove from his mind. Images that had, at one point, made him seriously consider suicide. Death had sounded blissful, a final and definite way to escape not only his monthly transformation horrors but also the memories of being manhandled by less than sympathetic medi-wizards after Fenrir Greyback attacked him and bit him that fateful day twelve years ago.

Remus’ breath was shallow now, his arms cramped from keeping them up in front of his face as if to stop the lid from crushing him. 

‘He’s lucky he’s not dead.’ It was a sentence he’d heard often in the days after the attack. Dazed and confused, scared and sore, five-year-old Remus had lain in his bed and listened to his mother cry in the next room. He hadn’t wanted her to leave his room. He hadn’t wanted to be alone. Not that night, or any night. Especially not since Remus knew one thing for sure now: Monsters were indeed real.

The rhythmic thuds became quieter as if from further away. He thought he could make out voices but couldn’t be sure. He closed his eyes against the darkness around him, resigned to the fact that he had no wand, no mental capacity to attempt magic without it, and that he was being buried alive. 

The month after Greyback’s attack was a hard one. He’d been sore but the bite he’d received from that monstrous dog was healing and he’d tried his best to show his parents how well he was doing. He hadn’t understood why his mother still cried so often. He’d hated seeing his usual happy-go-lucky mum be so sad all the time. 

When he’d asked her why he was making her so sad, she’d sobbed but hugged him even harder and told him it wasn’t him who made her sad but the monster who’d hurt him. He’d told her that he loved her too and that he’ll be brave and that the monster was now gone. It only made his mother cry even more.

Remus gave an involuntary sob as he squeezed his eyes shut even tighter against the flood of memories. This must be my life playing in front of my eyes. He couldn’t stop from remembering though.

‘No! Mama! I don’t want to go! Mama!’ Remus had screamed and kicked at the two medi-wizards who had come that day. They were taking him to the hospital they said, and he’d be back home the next day. He hadn’t understood why. His mother had sobbed in his father’s arms and even his strong, unflappable father had looked visibly upset. 

Remus’ cries had died in his throat when he’d realised neither parent would help him and stop these medi-wizards from taking him. It would be for his own safety, they’d cried. 

That night he’d refused to eat at the hospital and when they’d come to say it was time, he’d asked to go home again. ‘Tomorrow’ was all he’d gotten as an answer. A couple of nurses gave him sympathetic looks as he was marched down the corridor to an empty room that looked like a prison cell in a comic book he’d had at home. 

Just as the door was being closed behind him he’d overheard one nurse saying he’d have been better off dead. It had scared him to hear that and it had confused him, too. He’d healed, hadn’t he?

Then the pain had begun and Remus had screamed, unheard by the staff outside the magically secured room where the little five-year-old Remus transformed into a werewolf for the first time in his life. Scared. Alone. Unprepared because neither parent had known how to tell him. Remus hadn’t understood that though. What he had understood was that his parents hadn’t helped him. 

It had taken years for him to forgive his parents for these first few months. Not until his best friends voiced their deepest fears for him, of feeling helpless to do anything to alleviate his suffering and that his parents must’ve felt even worse, did he truly see the impact it must’ve had on them, too.

They’d moved house often to quell rumours about him because his father had managed to construct a safe room for him at home that made the need for monthly hospital visits unnecessary. That hadn’t stopped the neighbours from hearing noises though. 

Still, by age eight he’d agreed with the nurse he’d overheard that first full moon he’d transformed. He wished he had died in the attack. He didn’t dare say so out loud. And as long as his parents lived he’d not take his own life. He didn’t think his mum could survive it. He couldn’t leave her.

His final thought as his breath became even shallower and his mind slower was that despite it all he didn’t want to die. 

The irony would’ve made him laugh if he’d had the breath to do so. 

Then, darkness claimed him.

**

Peter scurried along the deserted corridor in his rat form. He’d been hungry and desperate for a snack. His Fudge Flies hadn’t lasted since their last Hogsmeade visit and his resolve to lose some weight wasn’t strong enough to resist a quick trip to the kitchens. 

Thankfully, he could transform into a rat at will and therefore avoid detection by the prowling caretaker Filch who always seemed to appear when least wanted. His belly was still rumbling as he raced as fast as his little legs could carry him. 

This time, Filch hadn’t been the one he’d nearly ran into. This time, it had been a group of fellow students, all draped in black cloaks, excitedly talking about how they’d finally got the ultimate revenge on the Marauders. How it was a pity it was only the sickly Lupin who’d fell easy prey, but how it was a service to wizardkind to get rid of yet another Half-blood. This time, for good.

Peter didn’t quite know what they meant, but he the fear it immediately spread through his body was real. So he abandoned the kitchen route and was now almost back at Gryffindor Tower. As he skidded around the last corner and found it empty, he barely halted in order to transform back into his human form. 

‘Out of bed again, Pettigrew?’ the portrait of the Fat Lady asked cheerily. ‘You boys really ought to behave better.’

‘FLOBBERWORM’, Peter wheezed at the painting.

‘So rude. No greeting, just commands!’

‘FLOBBERWORM!’, Peter now shouted in desperation and the portrait swung forward with a distinct disapproving huff. 

Even while he was still crawling through the portrait hole, Peter called out for his friends in hopes they’d still be in the Common Room rather than up in their dormitory. He was in luck. As he emerged and righted himself, both Sirius and James stood before him with identical looks of confusion on their faces.

‘Remus. The Map. Danger. Now. Help.’ He knew he mustn’t make any sense but in his panic, he couldn’t string a sentence together. 

‘Pete, what’s going on? Calm down, mate’, Sirius said and patted him on the shoulder in that patronising way he sometimes had about him. 

‘No. Remus in danger. Check the map. Now.’ Peter ran a pudgy hand through is dirty-blond hair. 

‘Okay, okay. It’s in my trunk, come on.’ James led the three up the stairs to their dorm and rummaged in his trunk for their Marauder’s Map he’d kept hidden there. Peter grabbed it and pulled it open impatiently.

‘There!’ he shouted in triumph, pointing at a cluster of names on the first-floor corridor. They were moving steadily downwards. Mulciber. Lestrange. Rosier.

‘Bloody Slytherin idiots. But what do they have to do with Moony?’ James asked. 

‘Overheard them say they got rid of ‘Half-blood Lupin. This time for good.’ James, where is Remus?’ Peter’s voice turned squeaky again as it was wont to do when he was upset or scared. 

‘He’ll be in the Hospital Wing still, see.’ James opened the map to a different section to show Madame Pomfrey’s domain, only to find it empty of students. 

Sirius let out a string of choice curse words under his breath, all the while helping two of his best friends scan the entire map for any sign of their friend. When they finally found his name, it appeared to be fading away. Right at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Remus’ name wasn’t moving, but fading in and out as if the ink was bleaching in sunlight every other second. 

They lost no time and didn’t even think to stop for the invisibility cloak. All three boys ran as fast as they could. Peter in a blind panic, following by default and happy that he didn’t have to think of a plan anymore now that James and Sirius had taken control. James and Sirius were just a little ways ahead of him, throwing single words at each other, letting the plan develop as they went. 

Outside the portrait hole, they stopped and told Peter to run to Dumbledore’s office at the opposite end of the seventh-floor corridor and to raise an alarm with their Headmaster in any way he needed to, including breaking down the door. Then the two boys sprinted towards the hidden passageway that would lead them directly down to the second floor, giving them a much-needed shortcut.

As they ran, they mentally cursed the Slytherin students they knew were responsible for whatever Remus’ situation would be when they found him. They just knew and in their minds, they watched in satisfaction as they saw them expelled, or better yet, tried at the Wizengamot and exposed as Death Eaters. 

Miraculously, they made their way down to the Entrance Hall undetected and as soon as they were outside both transformed into a big, black, shaggy dog, and a stag respectively. It was faster to canter on four legs than run on two. 

When they reached the point of the Forbidden Forest the map had indicated Remus would be, they were greeted with nothing but foliage, trees, shrubs and damp earth. There was no sign of their friend. No noise to indicate anyone was there. Sirius, in his dog form, began sniffing the ground and picked up a scent that didn’t quite belong. It led him around a large oak tree behind which he found some freshly disturbed ground. He gave a sharp staccato bark before transforming back to human form. 

Just as James appeared beside him, he finished the incantation for revealing human form. It took both boys’ brains much longer than they’d care to admit to understand and fathom what the spell was telling them: There was a human here. And he was underground. 

They began to dig frantically, Sirius again in dog form, James in human form after transfiguring a branch into a shovel. Neither wanted to use magic, too afraid of hurting Remus if he was indeed trapped in the earth here. 

Within a couple of minutes, they’d found wood that quickly became evident to be some kind of rudimentary coffin. 

‘REMUS!’ James was shouting now, his voice uncharacteristically laced with sheer panic. ‘REMUS!’ Sirius, back in his human form also and digging with his bare hands, joined in with the calls for Remus. Neither boy stopped digging or removing the earth. 

A sudden blue jet of light flew past them, into the hole both were thrown backwards off their feet as the coffin raised up and out. Dumbledore’s voice registered with them as they’d rarely heard him. Underlying anger they were glad was not directed at them. Peter panting at his side. 

Within seconds, Dumbledore had lifted the lid off the coffin and the sight of Remus, deathly still stopped all four in their tracks for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. 

Dumbledore acted swiftly and levitated the body up and gently back down onto the forest floor. He laid a hand on Remus' chest and waved his wand in a complicated pattern while muttering under his breath. James, Sirius, and Peter were holding their breaths, unwilling and unable to say anything, too afraid they were late.

‘He’s alive.’ Dumbledore said, eventually, and immediately held up his hand to stop the inevitable outburst of words from the boys. ‘He needs the Hospital Wing. We will talk after. You three please go to my office. I will see to your friend.’

**

Three days later, Remus returned from the Hospital Wing. He looked worn out, but the grin on his face was unmistakable happiness at being alive and seeing his friends. They immediately retired to their dormitory to speak to him about it all, having been banned from even visiting while Remus recovered under Madame Pomfrey’s expert care. They had to promise the Headmaster to abide by those rules, and they’d reluctantly agreed and found they had no way to sneak in either. Dumbledore had put an alarm around Remus’ bed. Conniving old codger that he is, as Sirius had put it.

So they did the only thing they could do: welcome their friend back with a flourish, and promise to avenge his near-death. The fury at it all was palpable in the room, the language used not to be repeated. They’d all had several meetings (interrogations, really) with the Headmaster and in the end, the Slytherins in question wouldn’t be expelled. They wouldn’t even get detentions, because they weren’t caught out of beds. By the time Peter had alerted Dumbledore that fateful night, and he, in turn, had tasked Professor Slughorn to check on his students, all were accounted for in their Common Room, and nobody indicated to the contrary. 

It didn’t matter how much Sirius and James, and even Peter, swore they’d been out of bed or Peter wouldn’t have ever known where Remus was (neither wanted to admit to the map so they altered Pete’s account slightly to say the three Slytherins had been overheard where they’d left Remus to die) and that they were intimidating housemates to stop them from talking. 

Dumbledore assured them he was taking it extremely seriously but as there was no hard evidence, and merely word against word – not to mention all their fathers on the Board of Governors – there was no way to expel them, or indeed discipline them in any way. They would, however, be under close observation for the remainder of their school year.

‘Not good enough’, was the Marauders’ consensus. So they did what they did best: Prank them at every opportunity while becoming very skilled indeed not to be caught. Mostly.


End file.
